For Those in Heaviness
“In heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” — i Peter i. 6, 7.
*r|Jr^EAVINESS! “He began to be sorrowful, and i r= A very heavy.” It was only through the darkness of that garden that He could pass upward to the glory of the Resurrection morn. And it is impossible to depict the condition of deep human suffering more accurately than by the words, “in heaviness.” As the leaves of the laurel are pressed to the earth by the weight of a thunder shower, so are souls made heavy “by manifold temptations.”
Temptation here is equivalent to trial. In other days the same word was used indiscriminately of the testittgs, which befal the saints, on the part of God and of the devil. The one, that we may know ourselves as He knows us, and that the first small germs of good which He has implanted may develop by use into strong and beautiful maturity. The other, that the evil within us may be made manifest, and hurried into such action as will cast down our hopes, and sow the seeds of future indulgence. The motive of God’s testings is benevolence, that we may be nobler, sweeter, riper. The motive of Satan’s is malignity, that we may be hastened down the sliding-scale of sin. Thus God is said in the Scriptures to tempt men, and yet not to tempt them (Gen. xxii. i; James i. 13). He tests and tries them, but never allures them into evil.
In our desire to distinguish between these two methods of testing, we for the most part employ different words, using trial of the divinely-ordered discipline of life, and temptation of the attacks of the great enemy of our souls. And, therefore, it is more appropriate to modern usage to speak of being in heaviness “through manifold trials.” This is also suggested by the Revised Version. {See also James i. 2.)
“Manifold trials.” — In this Epistle, as in a mirror, we can see reflected the dark shadows which were gathering over these scattered saints. Buffeted for doing well; reviled and suffering; exposed to railing and terror; evil spoken of; tried in a fiery trial; partakers of Christ’s sufferings; reproached for the name of Christ; judgment beginning at the house of God; experiencing the same afflictions as fell to the lot of brethren throughout the world: such are some of the hints given throughout this Epistle of the sources of their manifold trials. To “suffer as a Christian” (iv. 16), meant the loss of business, repute, and home; desertion by parents, children, and friends; misrepresentation, hatred, and even death. The new convert became the target for every weapon, hurled from any quarter.
For ourselves, trials come generally from three sources: those brought on us by others; those caused by our own sins, mistakes, and indiscretions; and those sent to us directly from God, our Father. And beneath this various pressure, what wonder that the heart is bowed down! How apt was the summons of Jesus to the heavy-laden; and how incessant the great procession of such passing down into the Vale of Tears, at the end of which stands his cross, behind which the light of morning is breaking I
The Apostle does not blame this heaviness. — The Stoic scorns to shed a tear: the Christian is not forbidden to weep; yea, he follows the best example in letting his tears have free course. We must not despise the chastening of the Lord, any more than we should faint under it. Strong crying and tears befit sons who are learning obedience by suffering. The soul may be dumb with excessive grief, as the shearer’s scissors pass over the quivering flesh; or, when the heart is on the point of breaking beneath the meeting surges of trial, the sufferer may seek relief by crying out with a loud voice.
But there is something even better. They say that springs of sweet fresh water well up amid the brine of salt seas; that the fairest Alpine flowers bloom in the wildest and most rugged mountain passes; that the noblest psalms were the outcome of the profoundest agony of soul. Be it so. And thus amid manifold trials souls which love God will find reasons for bounding, leaping joy. Though deep call to deep, yet the Lord’s song will be heard in silver cadence through the night. And it is possible in the darkest hour that ever swept a human life to bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you learnt this lesson yet? Not simply to endure God’s will; nor only to choose it; nor only to trust it — but to rejoice in it with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Of such joy there are two sources: first, the understanding of the nature and meaning of trial; second, the soul’s love and faith in its unseen Lord. There is enough in these two for unsullied and transcendent joy; in fact, we may question whether we ever truly drink of Christ’s joy, till all other sources of joy are eliminated by earthly sorrow, and we are driven to seek that joyous blessedness which no earthly sun can wither and no winter freeze (Hab. iii. 17-19).
L The Nature and Meaning of Trial. — Trial is here compared to fire; that subtle element, which is capable of inflicting such exquisite torture on our seared and agonized flesh; which cannot endure the least taint or remnant of impurity, but wraps its arms around objects committed to it with eager intensity to set them free and make them pure; which is careless of agony, if only its passionate yearning may be satisfied; which lays hold of things more material than itself, loosening their texture, snapping their fetters, and bearing them upwards in its heaven-aspiring energy. What better emblem could there be for God, and for those trials which He permits or sends, and in the heart of which He is to be found? Ah, the agony of suff’ering is keen to bear — when friends forsake, and enemies reproach, and the work of years is suddenly shattered, and the soul is stung with pain and shame and ingratitude, with disappointment and bereavement: such suffering is to the soul what fire is to the flesh. (i) But this fire is a refiner’s fire. — The reference is evident. And we are taken back to an olden prophecy, from which we learn that when the Lord comes to his temple, He sits as a refiner beside the crucible (Mai. iii. 3). We may well take the shoes from off our feet, when we enter the chamber of some tried Christian, for certainly the Lord is there.
// is He who pci’mits the trial. — The evil thing may originate in the malignity of a Judas; but by the time it reaches us it has become the cup which our Father has given us to drink. The waster may purpose his own lawless and destructive work; but he cannot go an inch beyond the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Satan himself must ask permission ere he touches a hair of the patriarch’s head (Job i. 8-12). The point up to which we may be tested is fixed by consummate wisdom. The weapon may hurt and the fire sting; but they are in the hands which redeemed us. Nothing can befal us without God’s permission, and his permissions are his appointments. We cannot be the sport of blind fate or chance; for in trial we are still in the hands of the living Saviour.
// is He who superintends the trial. — No earthly friend may be near; but in every furnace there is One like the Son of Man. In every flood of high waters He stands beside us — staying the heart with promises, instilling words of fa-ith and hope, recalling the blessed past, pointing to the radiant future, hushing fear, as once He stilled the dismay of his disciples on the lake: such is the ministry of Jesus. And as the sufiferer looks back on the trial, he says, “I never felt Him so near before; and if it had. not been for what He was to me, I could never have lived through it.”
// is He who watches the progress of the trial — ^0 mother bending over her suffering child is more solicitous than is Hesuiting the trial to your strength — keeping his finger on your pulse so as to stay the flame when the heart begins to flutteronly too eager to see the scum pass off, and his own face reflected from the face of the molten metal.
Happy would it be for us if, instead of looking at our trials, we would look away to his face, only eager to understand his meaning, and to learn his intended lesson, so that as the outward man perishes, the inward man may be renewed day after day. Whilst the marble wastes beneath the sculptor’s hand, the image grows; so should each loss in our estate or circumstance have a corresponding gain in spiritual conformity to Christ.
(2) Trial is only for a season. — “Now for a season, ye are in heaviness” {ver. 6). The great Husbandman is not always threshing. The showers soon pass. Weeping may only tarry for the few hours of the short summer night: it must be gone at daybreak. Our light affliction is but for a moment.
There is a subtle distinction here between the most precious and endurmg of material substances and the faith of the Christian soul. “Gold that perisheth” {ver. 7). Gold outlasts carved wood, and the potter’s art, and most things else. It may be attenuated and worn by long use, yet will it survive the gentle hand on which it has spoken of unending love for half a century. Yet gold will eventually wear out. But there is that in each of us which cannot perish. The mere accident of death cannot affect it, nor the flight of time, nor the descent of all created things into the gulf of oblivion. It is eternal as the God who inspired it. And compared to that boundless existence which is its birthright, how paltry and insignificant do the longest trials appear, though they have lain for many years on the soul and life! Judged by the measureless span of eternity, they are but for a season, and will pass as completely from memory as the clouds of early morning before the meridian glory of a long summer day.
(3) Trial is for a purpose. — “It needs be.” There is nothing harder to bear than the apparent aimlessness of sorrow. A new mterest comes into the monotony of prison-discipline as soon as the convicts feel that their toils are achieving some positive result. And when no purpose seems secured by our sufferings or toils, hope dies.
With the Christian there is no fear of this. There is a utility in every trial. It is intended to reveal the secrets of our hearts; to humble us and prove us; to winnow us as corn is shaken in a sieve; to detach us from the earthly and visible; to create in us an eager desire for the realities which can alone quench our cravings and endure for ever. We must nOt look on trial as punishment for the past; because all penalty has been borne for us by our Redeemer. But each trial points to the future, and is intended to make us partakers of his holiness, and to work in us the peaceable fruit of righteousness. The very fact of trial proves that there is something in us very precious to our Lord: else He would not spend so much pains and time on us. “We do not prune brambles, or cast stones into the crucible, or plough the sea-sands.” * And Christ would not test us if He did not see the precious ore of faith mingled in the rocky matrix of our nature; and it is to bring this out into purity and beauty that He forces us through the fiery ordeal. Be patient, O sufferer: He must love you, or He would not chasten you; you must be his, or He would not take such pains with you; you must be capable of some high service which can only be secured through pain, or He would not plunge you into the refining fires. You must be able to bear the fire, or He would not pass you through it (Num. xxxi. 23).
The result will more than co7npensate us. — “Found unto praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” The gold is well repaid for the fires when it encircles the monarch’s brow; the diamond for the lapidary’s wheel when it glistens on the neck of beauty. And we shall be more than recompensed for all our trials, when we see how they wrought out the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. To have one word of God’s commendation; to be honoured before the holy angels; to be glorified in Christ, so as to be better able to flash back his glory on Himself — ah! this will more than repay for all. Let us live more constantly in that future, under the powers of the world to come! — as soldiers solace themselves in the arduous campaign by talking over their watch-fires of the welcome and rewards which will greet them on their return. “Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible” (i Cor. ix. 25). All
* Charles Stanford. the blessings which accrue throuyh trial are only possible to us, however, when the heart meekly accepts it from the hand of God, and opens to the operaiioti of the Holy Spirit. Trial alone may harden, as the fire which softens wax hardens clay to bricks. But when trial is accompanied with the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit, it is as a precious oil that does not break the head (Psa. cxli. 5).
See how 7mich God thinks of faith. — It is priceless in his esteem. What gold is to the miser, faith is to God. It is the root of all other grace, the germ of the saintly life, the key to the Divine storehouse, the foot of the heavenly ladder, the earthward pier of the arch that bridges the abyss between the unseen and the seen. To make it strong in one poor heart is a matter of extreme value in his sight. And since it can only grow strong by use, and exercise, and strain, be not surprised if He expose you to discipline, graduated according to your power, but becoming ever severer, until beneath his gracious tuition the faith, which once shivered at sight of the shallows, will plunge fearlessly into the deep, and do business in mighty waters.